Finding Claire Fletcher (A Claire Fletcher and Detective Parks Mystery Book 1)

by Lisa Regan

  The second man, Martin Speer, was older than Teplitz. Speer was forty-six, unmarried, and marginally employed. He was looked at much more closely by Farrell as a suspect in Claire’s disappearance. Eventually, he was cleared. The third guy was a twenty-six-year-old auto mechanic named Jim Randall. He was also cleared as a suspect.

  All three men had gone with Claire to a motel for the night, and on all three occasions, Claire slipped out while they slept, leaving only her address. Prints were never taken because of the highly trafficked nature of the motel rooms.

  Connor ran his hand through his hair. He slipped back into the kitchen for a drink. He sighed with relief as he saw the two scotch glasses next to his sink. He hadn’t taken care to wash them.

  Gripping Claire’s glass carefully by the rim, he slipped it into a large Ziploc bag he pulled from the cabinet over the sink. Before he got any deeper into this case, he had to be certain.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  I banged on the door because I knew she hated it. Tiffany took her time answering, although I was certain she heard me approaching.

  “What do you want?” she asked when she opened the door.

  “What’s going on?” I said without preamble.

  We stared at each other, the raw hatred between us palpable. She twirled a thin strand of hair around one finger and looked through me. “I don’t know what you mean,” she said.

  “You know damn well what I mean. Something is going on, and you’re going to tell me what it is.”

  She smiled wickedly and met my gaze. She thrust her tiny breasts my way. “You’ve been banished, little Lynnie. What goes on in this house no longer concerns you,” she said.

  I placed a palm on the door. “What goes on in this house concerns me when that psycho deviant bangs down my door at six a.m. What are you up to?”

  She sucked her teeth. “Wouldn’t you like to know. You haven’t been a very good girl lately, have you?”

  His words dripped from her phony pubescent mouth. I wanted to punch her in the face. “Don’t play games with me, you little twit. It’s getting old and so are you. If you think making trouble for me is going to keep you on his good side, you’re wrong. You’re already past your expiration date.”

  I said it because I wanted to hurt her, although it was true. I was cast from the fold like garbage at nineteen, never more grateful to him. For Tiffany, however, that was her greatest fear.

  “He’s always loved me more than you,” she spat. “Now go away.”

  “Tell me what’s going on. I know something is up.”

  “You don’t know what you’re talking about. Go away or I’ll tell him what you’ve done.”

  Fear tickled the back of my neck, but I tried not to show it. “Which is what, exactly?” I challenged.

  She did her best little-girl-playing-coy act and looked at her feet. “Well, I don’t know, but I’m sure I can come up with something.”

  “You’re pathetic.”

  “No, I’m not. He still wants me,” she replied tartly. And with that, the door slammed in my face.

  I stomped back to the trailer, feeling her beady eyes on my back. I couldn’t shake the image of him fidgeting with the buttons of his jacket as he stood in the run-down living/dining room of my trailer. I knew those motions by heart. He was hiding something. Tiffany was helping him, as she always did.

  Back in my trailer, I shoved the chair under the doorknob once more and peeked again out the kitchen window. The slight shift in the curtain in the front window of the house mirrored me. As always, she was watching. My heart beat faster as Connor’s face floated through my mind, all exquisite lines accentuated by a broad smile. I felt his skin on mine again, and my lips tingled with the memory of his mouth on mine. I should warn him. It was a risk, but it was the least I could do. I pushed the curtain back in place and got back into my bed, deep beneath the heavy pile of covers. My mind searched for some tattered remnant from the battery of tricks it had used over the ten years of captivity to keep me sane and alive. I closed my eyes, welcoming thoughts of Connor and then pushing those same thoughts away.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Connor let himself into the vestibule that led to the doors of the Sacramento County District Attorney’s Crime Lab. It was late. Except for the guard in the front lobby and one or two lab technicians, the building was unoccupied. He buzzed the intercom outside the locked double doors to the lab.

  Lena Stark’s voice came back to him, a grainy twitch. “Yeah?”

  “It’s Connor,” he said. “Buzz me in.”

  “What do you want?” the box demanded.

  “Stark, just let me in.”

  “This better be good,” she said.

  The doors buzzed and Connor slipped through. The lab was dark, most of its crew had gone home for the day. Only Lena remained, mostly to log evidence and process what she could of the overworked lab’s backlog.

  Lena emerged from a dimly lit room to his right. She wore her long white lab coat over a plain white blouse and black slacks. Her blonde hair was pulled back and smoothed away from her face by the wide black band of a set of goggles. Her hands were on her hips. “What is it, Parks?”

  He smiled as charmingly as he could. “I need a favor,” he said.

  Lena rolled her eyes. “A favor? Now?”

  “Do you think I’d be here this late if it wasn’t important?”

  Lena frowned and bit the inside of her cheek. It was an endearing little tic he’d loved while they were dating. They’d only gone out a few times, but it had been too soon after Denise left for Connor to put any energy into developing a relationship. They’d parted amicably and remained on good terms.

  “Heard you were on the desk,” Lena said.

  “Oh man,” he groaned.

  Lena stepped toward him, a smile playing at the corners of her delicate mouth. “Well, are you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Wanna talk about it?”

  “For God’s sake, no,” Connor said.

  Lena shrugged. “Okay.”

  Clearly, she did want to talk about it. Connor leaned against a nearby table. “Look,” he said. “If you already heard from someone that I’m on the desk, then you already know why, and in two weeks you’ll know the decision of the review board too.”

  She moved in front of him and touched his hand. “I’m sorry,” she said.

  Connor gave her a lopsided smile. “Well, it’s not over yet.”

  “Not by a long shot.”

  “So about that favor?”

  “What have you got?”

  Connor pulled the Ziploc bag with the scotch glass in it from his pocket. “Can you pull prints from this?” he asked.

  Lena took it from him, all business now. She held the glass up to the overhead light to examine it. “This is it?”

  “Yeah,” he said.

  “Do you need a chain of custody voucher?”

  “No,” he replied. “I said this was a favor. It’s a cold case. I only need the prints for confirmation. They’re not evidence.” He cleared his throat. “Some of them will be mine.”

  Lena looked at him, one graceful brow arched in curiosity. “You aren’t in any trouble, are you?” she asked.

  Connor laughed. “No. I mean no more than usual. It’s just that—well, I think the other person who touched that glass is someone who’s been missing for ten years.”

  Lena’s brown eyes widened. “Really? Wanna talk about that?”

  “No. Not yet, anyway. Maybe when I’ve got a little more of it figured out.”

  Lena dropped the glass into the side pocket of her lab coat. “Fair enough. Want me to run it while you’re here?”

  “That would be great,” Connor said.

  Two hours later, Connor and Lena huddled together in front of her computer, picking at the Chinese takeout they’d ordered.

  “Are you sure she’s in the database?” Lena asked. The mouse moved in concert with her hand. Her eyes were trained on the large glowi
ng screen.

  “Yeah,” Connor said. “She’ll definitely be in the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children database. Her parents had all their kids fingerprinted. Part of some safety program at their school.”

  “Well, at least our tax dollars are going to good use,” she said.

  She sat back and they watched the computer zip through thousands of faces, looking for a match to the fingerprints Lena had taken from the scotch glass. It took only a few moments. The computer emitted a low ding, and a photo of fifteen-year-old Claire Fletcher flashed on the screen—her school photo, the same one Tom Fletcher had shown Connor.

  Connor already knew what the prints would yield, but the cold confirmation sent another wave of shock through him. His stomach, which had been blissfully full a moment ago, suddenly felt hollow.

  Lena was staring at him. “That her?”

  “Yep.”

  Lena squinted at the screen, reading the information that scrolled beneath the photo and set of matching prints.

  Claire Bridget Fletcher, abducted 02/21/1995, from the 600 block of Miller Avenue. Last seen wearing blue jeans, yellow cotton shirt, and white tennis shoes. Hair: brown. Eyes: blue. Approximate height: five foot four. Weight: 122 pounds. Scar on left elbow. DOB: 10/22/1980. Age at time of disappearance: fifteen. Age now: twenty-five.

  Lena made a low sound under her breath. “Holy shit.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  1995

  During those months I spent in the dark visited only by him, my body laid open for his use, I had this fantasy that any moment a SWAT team would break down the door. Men swathed in black armor, wearing black helmets, and bearing huge guns would storm in and rescue me. They would untie my hands and feet and avert their eyes from my nakedness. Gentle hands would lift me into the air and wrap me in a heavy blanket, finally covering me.

  They would spirit me outside. My eyes, so accustomed to darkness, would hurt from the daylight. There, on some lawn in front of some house, would wait my parents, huddled together, looking anxious and hopeful. My mother would be wringing her hands and leaning away from my father’s embrace, her eyes searching for me. My saviors would deliver me into their arms, cradled in blankets like the day I was born. I would feel my parents’ tears raining on my face, their arms closed around me until the three of us were a single, compact unit.

  Seconds later, burly SWAT members would emerge from where I was being held, dragging him along between them, his hands cuffed so tightly behind his back that the metal nipped and chaffed his skin. They would throw him down on the ground, face in the mud, and step on the back of his neck with their heavy black boots. Triumphant, my saviors would nod solemnly at my newly unified family, as my abductor squirmed like a garden snake under their oppressive feet.

  From there, I added variations. Sometimes my parents would take me home, and my mother would draw me a steaming bubble bath and stay with me while I soaked away the dirty injustices committed against my body. I wouldn’t have to go to school for a long time. My mother would take me and Brianna shopping.

  Other times, my parents, Tom, Brianna, and I would celebrate my return with a barbecue, after which we would play softball in the backyard. Brianna would sleep with me at night. My body curled into hers while she stroked my hair in the dark. And I would never have to tell her about the things he did.

  In some scenarios, my brother would escort me every place I went, like a bodyguard, and when I was frightened, he would throw an arm around my shoulders like he always did and say something to make me laugh. Sometime after I had arrived home, we would get a dog, and my family would let me choose its name.

  I sustained myself on these fantasies, stories I told myself while I waited in darkness. Whenever he came to touch me, to screw me, I would go away in my mind, to the day when the SWAT team arrived and I was delivered from that cold black womb.

  I don’t know how long he kept me in that room. He came many times to feed and wash me and allow me to relieve myself. Then he would come for the other. One day he arrived to find that my period had begun. I hadn’t given it much thought, but when he realized what it was, he was infuriated. He slapped me, and my arms tugged mercilessly to cover my face.

  “What is this?” he asked.

  “My period,” I said with difficulty, my right cheek stinging.

  “How can this be?”

  I didn’t look at him. I actually considered launching into the biological mechanics of a woman’s body, a lecture I’d heard from both my mother and my health teacher at school. Instead, I said, “I’m fifteen. I’ve had it for years now.”

  “Fifteen,” he said, but it was not a question.

  I hazarded a look his way. His face drained of color, his eyes widened. He met my eyes. “How long does this last?” he asked.

  If I could have shrugged, I might have. “It depends,” I said, forming each word carefully so as not to aggravate the ragged tear inside my right cheek where my teeth had cut into the impact of his slap. “Sometimes four days, sometimes seven, or anywhere in between.”

  He looked down his nose at me. “You’re soiled,” he said, and his voice was the quiet of a knife’s edge.

  He turned on his heel and left, his jacket flapping against his sides. I thought he would not return for several hours, as was his habit when something about me displeased him. But he returned within minutes, flying into the room, face twisted into an ugly mass of creases and lumps, like scar tissue. His fists were working before he even reached me, and I had a split second of terrible awareness of what was coming before his hands descended on me.

  He beat me. Fists, knuckles, and open hands beating a staccato rhythm up and down my body. I was literally like a drum, my body like rubber stretched taut over the mattress so that some of his blows glanced off me. I turned my head from side to side, frantically trying to avoid the worst of what was directed at my face. At some point, I realized he was speaking. His voice came in appalled gasps. “Fifteen,” he said. “Fifteen. Fifteen. Fifteen.”

  As quickly as he entered, he was gone.

  It was difficult to catch my breath. I panted, my head still turning wildly from side to side, the muscles in my neck not yet conscious of the fact that the beating had ceased. My skin stung and later my body ached and swelled. Blood dried at the corners of my mouth and in my teeth. I yearned to touch my own face.

  It was a long time before he came back. He did not look at me. I felt his hands releasing first my left hand and then my feet. In spite of my pain, I felt wild with anticipation, like a person wandering the desert without drink for days on end, spying an oasis on the horizon. He untied the bindings on my right hand and used handcuffs, which he pulled from his pocket, to secure my right hand to the head of the bed. But still, three of my limbs were free.

  Curling into myself was not as easy as my body wanted it to be. I was stiff and terribly bruised. He did not release my right hand and take me to the bucket, however. Instead, he set a bucket of soapy water next to the bed. One washcloth and one towel beside me. A bowl of soup on the table beneath the lamp.

  “Clean yourself” was all he said. Then he was gone.

  The pain of my body wilted under the glare of my new freedom. To be able to move three of my limbs, curl up my body, touch my swollen face! To be able to wash myself and feed myself privately! I had to move gingerly, but I reached the washcloth into the bucket and came up with a handful of warmth. I started with my face, then my shoulders, breasts, and stomach. I washed and washed, gently rubbing the washcloth over my skin again and again until the water in the bucket cooled.

  I stuck my feet in it and let them soak for a while. Then I ate. The soup was bland, but in that moment it was the best soup I ever had because it did not come directly from his hands. I lay down curled on my side, my right arm stretched awkwardly above my head, still cuffed. I pulled the towel over me and slept.

  He did not come back for a very long time. I knew it was several hours because I had to urinate, and the
waste bucket was far from my reach. I debated on using the wash bucket since it was already dirty, but I didn’t. I held it until it seemed as if the slightest movement would cause my bladder to burst. Finally, I went on the floor. I realized it would likely garner another beating, but I did not care.

  Time stretched on. The rosy glow of my newfound freedom fell away with the hours. Hunger pangs came and went, replaced by weakness and what felt very much like delirium. I began to worry that he had abandoned me or that something had happened to him and that no one would ever know where I was. I would die in the barren room.

  I didn’t know whether I wanted to live or die. I thought that if he returned, I would wish I had died. But if I wanted to live, I had to do something because I knew it had been days since I’d had anything to eat or drink. I remembered reading about people who drank their own urine to survive while trapped in the wilderness or under collapsed buildings in the rubble left by earthquakes. I wondered if I really wanted to live badly enough to do something that my fifteen-year-old mind could only describe as so gross. But my fantasy of SWAT rescuers and being reunited with my family had been my sustenance for so long that I could not let go of that one last, ragged thread on which my will to live dangled.

  I drank the wash water.

  The water was gone by the time he returned. I was too weak to move or speak. I saw him from beneath heavy eyelids. I wondered if he was really there or if I was hallucinating. He said nothing. He simply went about his business and left.

  The next time he came bearing food. He fed me and stroked me as if I were a pet. He talked in that soothing voice, telling me it would be okay. He was here now. He would take care of me.

  “There now, love,” he cooed. “My sweet Lynn. From now on we have to be careful. We can’t get you pregnant, you know. You’re much too young for that kind of responsibility. From now on we’ll have to use contraceptives.” He spoke as if I were a coconspirator, a willing party, a partner.

  I wish I could say that those weeks were my lowest point.